Friday, 20 June 2014

The unthinkable has happened! A couple of weeks ago I became an Old Aged Pensioner (minus the benefits).
So, to celebrate, challenge and defy my descent
into decrepitude, I’m going to run the Victoria Falls Half Marathon on
June 29th. And by doing so, I’m hoping to raise some money for the
wonderful Friends of Hwange Trust who have been fuelling and
maintaining ten major waterholes in the Hwange National Park since 2005.

We visited the park during the horrendous droughts of 2012 and 2013,
and saw wave upon wave of desperate elephants come running down to drink
at Nyamandlovu pan. Animals were forced to range for miles away from
water in search of food. Hundreds died, and had it not been for the
crucial work of the Trust and some private concession holders, there
would have been many, many more casualties.

Hwange is our flagship national park but like everything connected with wildlife in this country, its survival is down to private individuals, like the members of the Trust, who dedicate themselves to the job for no reward. These people are 100% trustworthy, and all their work is entirely funded by donations. As they say on their website < http://www.friendsofhwange.org/:
"Fancy buying a couple of drinks? A donation of just US$10 is enough
money to provide water for 250 elephants for one day. It is estimated
that there are around 40 000 elephants in Hwange as well as millions of
smaller animals. Every donation helps to prevent animal suffering."

If you can help, please take the details from their website and send me a message so that I can acknowledge. $10 is all we need... Thank you so much!

PS I took up running a couple of years ago - and at first I didn't think I'd get past a couple of kilometres without falling over. But I gradually improved, and although I find it a pretty hard slog most of the time, the benefits are very real. Apart from feeling great and far stronger, there's that post-run high to look forward to and the sense of achievement when you've given it your all. I told Rich that I was running away from old age, to which he replied (mournfully): "or else you're running towards it". You can tell whose glass is half-empty!

Wednesday, 7 May 2014

10th March 2014 – the three of
us, my husband Richard, son David and I, took off from Bulawayo for the
Chimanimani mountains at the southern end of the Eastern Highlands.Moody and magnificent, the mountains stretch
for 40km from north to south, along the border with Mocambique.

Our friends, Doug and Tempe van de Ruit had
organised a two-day hike up to Terry’s cave – a climb of around five hours for those
who like to take it easy.After weeks of
rain, mist was still swirling around the tops of the mountains, but that
morning, the sky was at last beginning to clear.From our starting point at National Parks
base camp, those seemingly impenetrable walls of broken quartzite looked pretty
intimidating, but we were going to take the easiest route – through the “Banana
Grove” - and there was no rush.The van
de Ruits and their porters were all seasoned mountaineers, so we knew we’d be in
very good hands.

It was a perfect mountain morning – still
and sunny – with that special clarity that comes after a long spell of rain.We drank at every swift flowing stream we
crossed, and swam in a tingling cold pool on the Bunde River, where we had our
picnic lunch.

The climb from the Bunde was the most
challenging – straight up from the river on a slippery path and mostly at a
crawl, grabbing onto tufts of grass and rocks to haul ourselves up.Over the top and we were almost there –a dark triangular hole in the rocks was the
marker for Terry’s cave – with only a matter of 750m to go.

I left Rich photographing a pocket of wild
flowers, and went ahead, very ready to swap the backpack and the sweaty clothes
for a swim in another deliciously icy pool. Moments later, I heard a cry of
pain and found Rich sitting on the side of the path, holding onto his right foot.It had somehow twisted under him on the uneven
path with what he described as “a loud snap”, and he was in agony.David and a porter supported him as far as
the cave; our peaceful hike having suddenly turned into a very tricky situation
indeed.

Rich’s leg cramped in the night, causing
him intense pain, as the muscle affecting the ligament in his foot went into
spasm.By the morning, it was clear that
this was no ordinary sprain, and that he could not possibly get off the
mountain without some serious assistance.We’ve been members of BUPA for years, but we had very nearly cancelled
our last sub because of the cost. Now, we are onto the least expensive option -
the Essential Scheme - which basically covers emergency air evacuation,
hospitalization, out-patient surgery and cancer.Very fortunately, we had charged cell
phones with us, so with the help of a number of wonderful friends, we managed
to contact BUPA overseas and request a casevac by helicopter.This wasn’t simple.BUPA handed us over to MARS, their local partner,
and it took 24 hours of phone calls, many of which were not returned, before a
chopper finally arrived, perching itself on a patch of flat, open ground 100m
from the cave, where one had apparently landed some years previously for
another mountain rescue.

BUPA insisted that Rich should see an
orthopaedic surgeon in Harare, so MARS

left him at the Avenues Clinic - but that
wasn’t the end of the drama.

He was charged a $50 admission fee to casualty
– which left him with $10.The doctor
would not look at his foot, which was still strapped with a dirty length of
mutton cloth, before it was x-rayed, but Rich didn’t have the $90 to pay for
them. Nor did he know anyone in Harare he could call. The option on offer was
to be turned onto the street. He finally persuaded the hospital to let him wait
out the night in the “observation ward” until something was worked out.At 10pm, thanks to a very kind friend of the
girls at the Frog and Fern cottages who came to his rescue, Rich was
x-rayed.The doctor on duty took one
look at them, and assured him it was only a sprain – nothing that a two-week
rest wouldn’t sort out.He still refused
to examine the foot – even though Rich was adamant that there had been soft
tissue damage.The friend paid Rich’s
bills at the clinic, including a steep $118 for two hours in the observation
ward - where no one had come near him – and took him home for the night.

He saw a sports injury doctor the next day,
and was operated on by Dr. Bowers at St. Anne’s a few days later – for a
ruptured tendon.And St. Anne’s was
great!Rich is in a leg cast for six
weeks, and a month in a walking boot thereafter.

And always take fully charged cell phones
with different provider options if possible (there was no Net-One signal from
the top of the Chimanis), a credit card, a supply of cash and your medical aid
details.

Expensive though it is, we can recommend
BUPA – but remember you are in local hands after that, so you need to be
prepared for complications and delays.

Lastly, unless you are totally confident of
your own abilities –go with a guide.

Things went as well as they did for us because
of our friends in Chimanimani – first, Doug and Tempe van de Ruit, who have
spent their lives in the mountains and have taken part in many an emergency
rescue.We’d follow them anywhere!

After the helicopter had left, and the
feeling of having just taken part in a particularly dramatic episode of Survivor had passed, the rest of us packed
up and headed home, this time via Bailey’s Folly: a notoriously steep plunge straight off the
side of the mountain back to base camp, where we had left the vehicles.We spent the night at the Frog and Fern, run
by Jane High and Dee Schafer– a truly delightful and luxurious little lodge amongst the msasas, a couple of kilometres
above the village.It’s a perfect place
to base yourselves for a few days – and not just for over-ambitious
mountaineers like ourselves.You can
walk for hours from the Frog and Fern – to the nearby Bridal Veil Falls and
Eland Sanctuary, up to Pork Pie or Greenmount – and Jane and Dee are wonderful
and informative hosts.Again, the
cottages are very well equipped for self-catering and reasonably priced.Check their website www.thefrogandfern.com for everything
you need to know about Chimanimani from history, safety and security, road
conditions and how tourism is helping disadvantaged local children.

Aside from the drama, hiking in the
Chimanis was one of the most exhilarating experiences of our lives – but next
time, we’ll be better prepared!

Saturday, 26 April 2014

This stuff is hollow and springy, more like
quills than fur, and it wasn’t long ago that it was used for stuffing saddles…

Which didn’t please its rightful owner, the klipspringer, who finds it invaluable as insulation from
extreme heat and cold, and as protection from injury when he is leaping around
in the rocks. Or, in this case, as a camouflage when your mother has been gone
for far too long, and you are hiding in the grass, desperate for food.

And that’s where Scout Khanye found him,
bleating, and putting himself into great danger of being discovered by baboons
or one of the four leopards who are presently active on Stone Hills.

Out of all the African antelope,
klipspringers ("rock jumpers" in Afrikaans) are the most devoted of spouses.They are rarely more than a few
metres from each other, and this closeness continues until one of them dies.

For their first two or three months, mothers hide away their babies, who instinctively stay still and quiet, so when you find
one of only a few days old continuously calling and alone, chances are that the
mother has died.

Sweet though he was, the last thing we ever
want to do is to remove animals from the bush unless it’s absolutely
necessary.Wild animals belong in the
wild.Care of orphans is fraught with
problems and rehabilitation is often unsuccessful, so Khanye and later David,
stayed in the area for another few hours hoping that the mother would return.

By the afternoon, it was clear that she
would not – so Klippie arrived in our guest bedroom, very sure of a welcome and
extremely hungry. His tiny mouth couldn’t manage any of our teats, so
Rich cunningly plugged a length of soft rubber hose onto the end of syringe, which had him feeding in no time – with Rich on one end with the syringe,
and me on the other, dabbing his bottom with a wad of wet cotton wool to
stimulate sucking.His mother would have been licking it- and she’s welcome.

All went beautifully for the first couple
of days until, inevitably, Klippie developed diarrhoea from the change in
diet.That’s pretty normal, but it
can’t be allowed to last long, as dehydration can kill very quickly.Within a couple of days, he was onto
rehydration solution and antibiotics, which meant a series of jabs into an
almost non-existent muscle in that tiny leg.

He must have been feeling very weak, but
that didn’t alter Klippie’s cocky attitude.

Not only did he try to head butt us, but he
was determined to jump - anywhere, all the time.Onto anything lying on the floor, off our
laps, out of our arms, or just on the spot – because that’s what he’s designed
to do on the tips of his hooves, like a ballet dancer en pointe: an adaptation that makes it possible for them
to bound sure-footedly up and down the steepest rocks.Most of the jumps ended up with Klippie flat
on his face or crumpled on the floor, but that didn’t stop him practicing.

His arrival came at a tricky time – we were
off on a hiking trip with David to the Chimanimani mountains four days later –
something we had promised to do before he took off to Brazil.Caring for young Klippie wasn’t like having
a puppy that anyone with commonsense could manage – this little chap was a mighty challenge, and
if he didn’t receive the right treatment, he wouldn’t last long.

And that’s when Baye Pigors came into the
picture – with her menagerie of Umfazi, the year old female baboon, rescued by Baye when the whole troop was destroyed on a local farm; Bange, the young male warthog - another orphan - and her two
enormous dogs, Tipsy and Sooty, plus a couple of Jack Russells.Chaos is king at the Pigors'
house. Umfazi leaps about, never far
from Baye , but apt to tease the others, and not above the odd exciting foray
over the wall for a bit of pilfering from the neighbours. It was hard to
believe that our tiny fawn, weighing in at a mere one kilogramme, could last more than a couple
of minutes with that bunch of heavyweights at large.The baboon would be jealous of him, the
warthog would want to butt him, and the dogs would probably have him for
breakfast. But Baye didn’t seem at all worried.Feeling guilty and relieved all at the same time, we left her standing
calmly in the driveway, with a box full of ideal milk, syringes, towels and
medicines, andKlippie in her arms.

Some people are good with animals; some have an instinctive “way” with them – and
that’s Baye (and her helper, Kumbulani, who lets Umfazi sleep in his bed when Baye is away).When we returned 10 days
later, Klips was running with the pack – best friends with Umfazi, and bossing up Bange.At first, anticipating a
pushover, Bange knocked him down.Then Klips got to his feet and charged –
giving the little warthog a good butt in the side.Even at that age, he demanded respect, and he got it.

Umfazi and Klippie with carer Kumbulani.

Two months later, Klippie is a healthy 4.1kg and still with his new family. Reintroducing him to Stone Hills could be disastrous. Like 90% of
orphans, in our experience, he’s a boy (doesn’t that tell you something?) – so
he won’t be tolerated by the adult males who are highly territorial.But he might just have to take that chance. Then again, Baye has plans to set up a primate
rehabilitation centre on a large piece of land, which may be another,
safer option.Whatever we decide,
though, it will be in the best interests of little Klippie – and as close as he
can be to a natural situation.

Thursday, 9 January 2014

The rains normally
begin in November, but what’s “normal” about the climate these days?There was much shaking of heads on Stone
Hills through Christmas and beyond when temperatures soared into the late 30’s.
Another drought was almost certainly looming, and no amount of supplementary
feed was going help the animals through this one.

FIRST WEIR SPILLING - JANUARY 2014

FIRST WEIR - LOOKING BACK FROM THE SPILLWAY - JANUARY 2014

And then suddenly the rains arrived, giving
us the best New Year’s present we could ever have wished for.We are heading for a total of 500mm (20 inches) to date and
with any luck there will be more, as we need late rains to see us through winter.Now the place is
bursting with babies – warthogs, impala, wildebeest, zebra and eland – many of
whom owe their lives to the support (whether it was financial, in kind, advice or passing the appeal onto your friends) that so many of you gave to their mothers through that
devastating drought.We lost some of
course, particularly amongst the older animals, with the sable taking the
hardest knock – but they too are recovering now that their bellies are full of
new green grass.

Thursday, 19 December 2013

Who needs the Met Department?With a lightning reaction, my husband whips
out his hand and squashes a fly in his fist.He does this at table, which is not only highly unnerving, but means we
often find stunned insects waving their legs in the salad.But Rich takes no notice of our objections
– out shoots the hand and within a few minutes, three flies are on their way to
a better life.

“Three in row,” Rich announces in a satisfied
voice, “so we’re going to have rain.” And we do, later that afternoon:our first shower, only 5ml and not nearly
enough to make a difference, but the flies were right, just as Rich had been
taught at his father’s knee.When they
are so slow and sluggish that you can catch them on the wing, it’s a sure
portent of rain (however little it might be).

Thursday, 28 November 2013

“What about Rich?” Jude asked me the other
day, after she and Kaye had received a CD we sent them of some of his
photographs.“Let’s hear more about him". Well, writing about my multi-faceted
husband is no easy task.

I met him when I was seventeen (a very good
year) and he was eighteen –temporarily stationed at The Vumba National Park as
a game ranger.We were friends immediately, having so much
in common, but it was clear to me that he couldn’t possibly be my intellectual
equal.After all, he had failed his
school leaver’s exams no less than three times, whereas I was studying English
and French at “A” levels.“Be nice to
Richard when you meet him,’ I admonished a sharp- tongued school friend,
“because he’s not very bright.”

I have had some reason to retract that
opinion.In fact, if I were to expand on
the multitudinous abilities of this volatile, impassioned, forthright and often
quite impossible man, I’d be writing a book and not just a brief blog post.

Most of us can do one thing reasonably
well, but not much more.If you can write,
you generally can’t do maths (ask me).If you’re an artist, chances are you won’t know how fix a tractor or
work a lathe.And a poet wouldn’t have
a clue about developing a thriving wildlife sanctuary from an exhausted piece
of bush.

But Rich is all those things –he turned our dream into reality on Stone
Hills, and has explored every facet of it as a scientist, an artist, a
photographer, a poet and a genius at fixing all things “bent and buggered”,
including the many wild animals who come into our care.

He’s actually quite bright too.To my drop-jawed astonishment, I met him on
my first day at the University of Rhodesia in 1974 where, coincidentally, we
had both begun our degrees as mature students – mine in law and his in biology
(he finished up as top student of his year).

I’m a very lucky girl.

__________()__________

Here are some of his recent photographs –
Rich entered the competition in the final volume of Handbook of Birds of the
World – to find the best of the best as it were – and out of almost 12,000
entries, two of his photos were included in the 200 chosen.

Tuesday, 19 November 2013

Rich has always wanted to know more about
the feeding preferences of our animals during the winter months, and
particularly in the drought.How have
the hundreds of dassies survived on Dibe Hill, for example, when there isn’t an
edible leaf left on the trees nor a scrap of grass for them to eat?

Certainly, the rock dassies (procavia) pick
up the feed scattered around the kudu drums, but that wouldn’t be enough to
sustain them.And yet, some of the
adults are as fat as they were in summer, leading me to suspect them of upping
their protein intake with a bit of infant cannibalism.

Having seen them savaging the poor kudu,
and stealingbonemeal from the birds –
nothing would surprise me about theseconsummate
survivors. Move over Jane Goodall and
the murdering chimps!

Linda, Amy and Bookey (imitating a stork)

As it turned out, my dark imaginings were (unfortunately)
put to rest by the arrival of Amy Scott – an ecologist from Melbourne – who recently
volunteered with us for a couple of months.She spent painstaking hours following giraffe and both species of
dassies as they fed, making some very interesting observations, including the
fact that, if they are really pushed, all will eat the leaves of poisonous
evergreens with no apparent ill effects.

Amy loved fossicking around, as I do, and
it was with her that I discovered the new brown hyaena den in the Nukutidza
area in a little explored part of the sanctuary.

We managed to find a perch high up on a
kopje about 250 m away from the den and saw quite a bit of activity in the late
afternoons.

Sadly, Amy had to go back to work, but
before she left, Linda Moyo arrived – a third year student from our University
of Science and Technology – who will be with us for some months on attachment.Linda studies wildlife management and has
taken over the dassie and giraffe project. She’s been helping out with feeding –keeping daily records and also bumping along
in the back of the tractor and hefting 50kg sacks – quite a feat for a city
girl who can’t be more than 5 ft high!

Linda Moyo, well and truly in charge of teaching Morula students ecological lesson

She’s been a great hit with the
Conservation Club children at Marula School too – and will be able to do some
really valuable work with them while she’s here.

I don’t imagine that there are many African
girls following the same path – so perhaps we have a Zimbabwean Wangari Maathai
in the making.We certainly need one!